Sam Langford has better wins at HW than Jack Johnson & should be ranked higher

i'm sure some people still considered jeffries the champion also. he was actually favourie in their fight i believe?

regarding the bit in bold, your right my knowledge on the colour line is really limited. until i do more research, i'm sure there are some great books out there describin the times, i can't buy into the hypothetical concepts outweighing the facts.

it might well be arguable that person A is better than champion B, but until it happens that they fight, I would by default rank champion B higher (whilst we're talking about 1 recognised champion that is)

same with liston, i hold him lower than some others because once he got his shot, his reign was really short, even though he could well have been the best heavyweight for 7-8 years.

now back to the colour line, i'm well aware that langford was the "coloured heavyweight champion" as well as themiddleweight at one point right? how much stock do we put in the award of that title? it certainly aint lineal but it can be argued that it contained the better challengers champs.

as i said i need to dig around more before making an informed definitive decision, but as it stands i'll go for the cold hard facts. they do show johnson as the champion and langford as the challenger. perhaps langford would have won, we'll never know. until i've looked in more depth at the colour line and the coloured belts i'll stick with this (perhaps naive, perhaps legitimate) viewpoint.

 

just to play devils advocate here, johnson also beat langford :yep

 

haha puts things into perspective doesn't it.

so where do you place langford and johnson on your atg heavyweight list?

 

"Yuse havin fun mr. tommy?"

 

so is this thread you arguing with yourself to rank langford higher :huh:rofl

 

so have you conviced yourself then

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVyrSimXYs[/ame]

LMAO at :45. Look at the way Jack Johnson just LOLs at James Jeffries hitting him in the face. I sometimes wonder if Jack Johnson was so good, he just laughed and toyed with his opponents on purpose.

 

brilliant, kinda reminds me of lewis doing it to briggs

 

Jeffries, Ross, Cowler, Roper, Moran, Russell, Klondike were way better than Iron Hague and if Jeff Clarke is considered a Hw then Fitz, Gardner and Childs were excellent wins for Jack.
On the question asked, I dont think you can rate a fighter higher on the basis of wins and ignore losses. BTW I give Sam a great chance of beating Jack circa 1912 and I think JJ knew it too.